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Whiplash delay will cost motorists £1.8bn, says Aviva

Insurer is disappointed at the government’s announcement that the whiplash crackdown will be delayed by a year to April 2020

The one-year delay in the whiplash crackdown will cost motorists £1.8bn, according to Aviva.

The insurer said it was disappointed at yesterday’s government announcement that it is holding off implementing the Civil Liability Bill and other measures aimed at limiting the cost of personal injury claims until April 2020.

The date had already been put back from October this year to April 2019.

The government said the delay will allow the new measures to be bedded in and for the Litigants In Person (LIP) portal to be up and running in time.

The measures include raising the small claims track limit from £1,000 to £5,000 for whiplash and to £2,000 for other injuries; setting up a tariff of compensation for different types of injury; and introducing a new mechanism for calculating the Ogden rate for long term personal injury compensation.

Critics said the measures will deny access to justice for individual claimants, and that the portal will be too complex for them to navigate.

Aviva claims director Andrew Morrish said the one-year delay ”will be disappointing to our customers who are tired of the status quo which tolerates fraud, nuisance calls and opportunistic injury claims”.

“We fully agree there needs to be a proper implementation period for the claimants portal,” he said. However, we are acutely aware that every day of delay to these pro-consumer reforms costs honest motorists £5m – or £1.8bn of excess costs over the course of the one-year delay.

“We call on Government to work with the industry to deliver the portal as quickly as possible for the benefit of the UK’s 30m motorists. “Aviva stands by our promise to pass on 100% of the savings from the Civil Liability Bill, and we want our customers to receive the full benefit as quickly as possible.”